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The first days of Trump and the migrant raids to come – podcast

Donald Trump’s first two days in office have brought many drastic changes – from withdrawing the US from the Paris climate accords, to pardoning hundreds of rioters convicted for the January 6 attack.

But it is in the area of immigration, perhaps, where the returning president has been the most radical. “It’s like he came in with a very hardline anti-immigration agenda,” explains senior political reporter Joan E Greve, “and he intends to carry out that agenda in every possible realm of policy, in every possible way that he can.”

Already, she tells Michael Safi, through a series of executive orders Trump has declared a national emergency on the southern border, restricted legal entry points from Mexico, and even sought to end rights – written into the constitution – that anyone born on US soil is eligible for US citizenship.

However, one plan – maybe more than any other – is sowing fear among migrant communities: for a series of dramatic raids through cities across America to round up undocumented migrants. Any Huamani, a community organiser with the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council in Chicago, talks through the fears among Latino groups in her city about what the next few weeks might bring.